Top folk singer to walk 60 miles for Dorset gigs

John Jones live in concert

JOHN Jones of folk rock legends Oysterband is about to set off on a challenging mini-tour through Dorset – walking to each of the venues on the route.

The Feet Don’t Fail Me Now tour 2010 will see John walking from Lyme Regis to the Larmer Tree Festival in Tollard Royal on the Dorset / Wiltshire border. On the way, he will stop to play gigs at Broadwindsor and Cerne Abbas.

He’ll be joined en-route by the Reluctant Ramblers – various surprise celebrity guests from the folk music world (eg, Show of Hands) who will be striding out with him, and joining him onstage at each of the gigs.

The Broadwindsor gig has been organised by Simon Emmerson, founder of The Imagined Village.

He lives in Broadwindsor and describes himself as “the reluctant promoter”.

“John asked me to book the hall and I’ve now ended up organising it,” he says.

“Some of the villages around here are where the renowned folk song collector Cecil Sharp collected his songs so there is a very strong folk song tradition. I love folk music and I love walking and doing this gig is putting something back into the community.”

Tickets for the Broadwindsor gig, which will have a bar run by local fundraisers the Broadwindsor Jubilee Group, cost £12 and can be obtained from Broadwindsor Stores, The Music Shop, Bridport, or by calling Simon on 01308 867316.

John Jones: "My grandad, Edward Longley ('Red Ted'), was the greatest influence on my life when young. From him I got radical politics, the sense of injustice, a love of nature, a love of lurchers, hatred of the Tory way of mind, the sense of history, and a short temper."

Music at a different pace

John Jones has been a keen walker for about 10 years now. His first walking tour with the Reluctant Ramblers took place last spring, when he walked from his home in the Welsh Borders to The Big Session festival in Leicester – a distance of 175 miles in around a fortnight. The tour was incredibly popular, with friends and fans joining him on the route, walking part of the path and then settling down in some idyllic village for a cold pint and an evening of gorgeous music. John hopes that fans in Wessex will similarly be inspired to come out and join him.

So why Wessex? “I was invited,” John explains simply. “Not long after the first Feet Don’t Fail Me Now tour last year, I was contacted by James Shepard from Larmer Tree festival. Oysterband were booked to play, and he thought I’d really enjoy walking some of the Wessex Ridgeway. So a plan was hatched!

“This is a part of the country I have always wanted to really explore. The ancient landscape along the ridgeway, the area around Cerne Abbas – it’s not the longest walk I’ve done, but I think it’ll be one of the most interesting.”

The tour cuts through the most beautiful Wessex countryside, and John says that re-connecting the music with the landscape has been one of the main inspirations behind both of the walking tours and his recent album: “A lot of the songs I’m singing are traditional, and some of the ones I’ve written for Rising Road, my first solo album, have a real sense of place. I’m not a very urban animal; I feel folk music to be rural and open. These songs, and these tours, are completely different from what I do with the Oysterband. It’s almost a way of coming at the music at a different pace.”

With this second Feet Don’t Fail Me Now tour, you can sense that John would like to be doing this kind of thing more regularly. “I’d love to make this an annual event,” he agrees. “I tour with Oysterband all over the world each year, and it can get quite hectic, but this is like a calm centre to look forward to: exploring a new landscape, finding lovely villages, little gems of pubs… it reminds you of what is so great about living in Britain.”